Oh, boo hoo! Hugo Chavez is upset!

EDITORIAL .- The winner of the elections, Porfirio “Pepe” Lobo said Monday that it will not allow Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez, no one “dares to stick their noses” in the crisis.

“That neither he (Chavez) and no one dares to set foot in Honduras,” said Wolf, the conservative National Party, which gained electoral authorities said in yesterday’s elections for 55.9 percent of the vote compared to 30.09 percent of Elvin Santos, the Liberal Party.

Honduras “is a free, independent and sovereign (…) will not accept impositions from anyone or political compromises that create division,” Wolf insisted.

Chavez called yesterday Honduran elections “a farce” and opined that have served to reveal the “double standard Yankee” and “double talk” of U.S. President Barack Obama.

American countries are divided between those who recognize the electoral process and its results, as is the case of Colombia, and those who have announced they will not because the elections were held without first reinstating the deposed Honduran President Manuel Zelaya.

“We want to restore and normalize relations with all countries. That they respect us just as we respect ourselves, “said Wolf

He stressed that the Hondurans came yesterday “massively” to the polls, saying that participation was around “62 percent” of the census compared with 54 percent of the previous election.

“There were no winners or losers. Democracy has triumphed, ” said Lobo, who added:” We can not dwell on the past. The most important thing is to see the future and avoid anything that divides people more

With far greater voter turnout than Honduras had when Manuel Zelaya was elected, the people of Honduras voted for the center-right Partido Nacional de Honduras. The center-left Partido Liberal de Honduras came in second, while the Zelayista César Ham finished with less than two percent of the vote.

Former President Manuel Zelaya had said that the election would have less than 50% participation and would thus be illegitimate; by the standard he set himself, the election was just fine.

The only reasonable interpretation of the vote is that the voters approved of deposing President Zelaya, and rejected the calls by President Chavez and other left-leaning governments to reinstate him.

14 Comments

Right, and that’s the way it should have been done to begin with, an election, instead of the coup trumped up by the Zelaya opposition.

I note that the Right, if they determine what they think is right, will go after that end, regardless of the means involved, which is the Machiavellian value that the end justifies the means.

It was this which characterized this coup, and it was this which characterized the Bush-43 years in office. So yes, the means matters. You right wingers ought to give heed to your values, that you don’t continue to slip into this Machiavellian mode, because the result can be, and often is, disaster!

Perry, doesn’t the fact that President Zelaya violated the Honduran constitution mean anything? Section 239 states that any public official who tries to eliminate the term limits on the presidency immediately loses his office and is barred from holding public office for ten years.

What else should the Honduran Supreme Court and Congress have done, given that there is no impeachment or suspension clause in the constitution?

Dana, are you prepared to argue that we should have displaced Bush-43 by a SCOTUS/Congress led coup, because he went to war in Iraq without going to Congress for a declaration of war?

Moreover, did you read what I posted on this topic several days ago?:

“Here are the facts from a reputable source: “Americans, relying on media reports, are likely to believe that Zelaya was ousted because he tried to use a referendum to extend his term of office. This is false.

Zelaya’s referendum, planned for the day the coup took place, was a nonbinding poll. It only asked voters if they wanted to have an actual referendum on reforming the country’s Constitution on the November ballot. Even if Zelaya had gotten everything he was looking for, a new president would have been elected on the same November ballot. So Zelaya would be out of office in January, no matter what steps were taken toward constitutional reform. Further, Zelaya has repeatedly said that if the Constitution were changed, he would not seek another term.””

It was a “non-binding poll”, therefore did not violate their constitution. Thus, the evidence is that the coup was done for political reasons and had nothing to do with the rule of law.

Thus, what their supreme court and legislature should have done was to wait the few months remaining in his term and let the normal election process happen, in which case Zelaya would not have been permitted to run, according to their law.

So now Perry, in an effort to once again defend a commie leftist, you have become an expert on Honduran constitutional law? And you also now presume to tell their Supreme Court what they “should” have done.

John, you obviously did not get my point, which is, basically, that there was indeed a coup. I gave the citation to back up my POV, which you neither acknowledged nor debated. Supreme courts are not infallible, motivated by political/ideological rather than constitutional considerations, as we learned ourselves in the Bush v Gore case in 2000.

Perry is dead-wrong, though of course he’ll never admit it. There was NO coup in Honduras, at least not in the traditional sense of the term as was peddled by the White House, the media and elsewhere. I have ample sources (sources, no doubt, that Perry will attempt to convince himself are somehow biased) throughout Colossus that completely negate Perry’s revisionist history. Perry’s “history” here is much like that of his “history” regarding Israel, which only serves to bolster his terrorist sympathy.

Yep, for Perry, the Honduran Supreme Court and legislature had absolutely no idea what they were doing. Of course, if a conservative suggested this, they’d be “racist” for suggesting that brown-skinned people cannot adequately govern themselves. When “progressives” do it, it’s because “they care,” and just “mean to do well” by the “poor underprivileged.”

DNW, let the people “destroy” whomever by an election, not by some elites trumping up a coup, as was the Honduran situation.

So, you are saying that, since Honduras didn’t have an impeachment procedure in its constitution, that the President should be allowed to violate the constitution in a manner which has a specific penalty — immediate removal from office and a ten-year attaintment — he should be allowed to remain in office and continue to violate the constitution until the next election rolls around?

Article 239 — No citizen that has already served as head of the Executive Branch can be President or Vice-President.

Whoever violates this law or proposes its reform, as well as those that support such violation directly or indirectly, will immediately cease in their functions and will be unable to hold any public office for a period of 10 years.

How should the constitutional provision that violators “will immediately cease in their functions” be enforced? If you say that removal of President Zelaya was unconstitutional — and it’s true enough that the Supreme Court and Congress made it up on the fly — would not the failure to somehow remove him also have violated the constitution?